News of the agreement comes a year after Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced the nations were restoring formal diplomatic relations that were severed shortly after communist leader Fidel Castro overthrew the island’s longtime dictator in 1959.
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Castro, 84, also said the two countries had “not made any progress” on issues Cuba considers necessary for normal relations, such as the continued USA trade embargo of Cuba, the US occupation of a naval base at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, and immigration policy.
In a statement yesterday, US President Barak Obama, touted the steps the US has taken to normalise relations with Cuba in the past year and called on Congress to lift its embargo.
That includes 20 flights to Havana and 10 to each of the other nine global airports in Cuba, he said, adding that no date has been set for final signing of the aviation pact but that nothing was expected to derail it. Human rights, Castro said, was one area “on which we have profound differences and about which we are having an exchange on the basis of respect and reciprocity”.
Aircraft landing in the United States must meet USA safety standards, so aging Russian planes in the Cuban fleet will likely only fly domestically within Cuba.
Delegations from both nations have been meeting in Washington since Monday to finalize the details of the commercial flight deal they have been working on for several months.
Other U.S. airlines – American Airlines Group Inc, Delta Air Lines Inc and United Continental Holdings Inc – have expressed interest in scheduling flights to Cuba.
American Airlines said it hopes to start flying scheduled services by the end of June and will continue operating existing charter flights until then. “We will review the terms of the agreement to understand how JetBlue can expand from charter service to regularly scheduled service”, said JetBlue’s senior vice president airline planning, Scott Laurence.
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Obama’s administration embarked on the rapprochement after concluding that decades of US isolation of Cuba had not succeeded in bringing about change.
